For my mother's mother
All my clothes are patched with Soviet things.
Needles, hardy and rough, dinosaurs withstanding time
Spools of thread that were my grandmother's,
Brought over in a special sewing box with clasps on the top and sides,
Skin-colored and worn, cracked open to reveal
Spikes to hang thread on, like the intimate insides of a body
An ancient body, creased like grandmother's hands.
For my father's mother, who taught me to embroider
My father's mother taught me to sew
Taught me to bring life to imagination, to calm my raw nerves
With the ancient language passed down from the war and her grandmother
The ancient language that lets our silences speak,
Jump off the cloth,
Embed permanently in the spaces between woven thread.
If it unravels, it may be mended for as long as we are alive,
Unless we pass it on to our daughters, our sons, and on and on, and on...
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016 at 2:18 PM UTC
For my mother's mother
All my clothes are patched with Soviet things.
Needles, hardy and rough, dinosaurs withstanding time
Spools of thread that were my grandmother's,
Brought over in a special sewing box with clasps on the top and sides,
Skin-colored and worn, cracked open to reveal
Spikes to hang thread on, like the intimate insides of a body
An ancient body, creased like grandmother's hands.
For my father's mother, who taught me to embroider
My father's mother taught me to sew
Taught me to bring life to imagination, to calm my raw nerves
With the ancient language passed down from the war and her grandmother
The ancient language that lets our silences speak,
Jump off the cloth,
Embed permanently in the spaces between woven thread.
If it unravels, it may be mended for as long as we are alive,
Unless we pass it on to our daughters, our sons, and on and on, and on...
Request permission to use this poem